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Today's
quotation:
Let us sometimes live—be it only for an hour,
and though we must lay all else aside—to make others
smile. The sacrifice is only in appearance; no one finds
more pleasure for oneself than the person who knows how, without
ostentation, to give him or herself to procure for those
around them a moment of forgetfulness and happiness.
Charles Wagner
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Today's
Meditation:
Sigmund
Freud said that almost all of our actions derive from two
motivating factors: the pursuit of pleasure and the
avoidance of pain. Most of us seem to pursue
pleasure by trying to collect things and experiences of
our own. But what if true pleasure consists of
bringing "a moment of forgetfulness and
happiness" to the other people in our lives? If
that's the case, then we're probably missing out on a lot
of pleasure by keeping our minds and efforts focused on
attaining things.
There
are people, of course, who make a show of doing things for
others. They want to receive recognition for their
efforts, and therefore their pleasure is not in doing good
for others, but in being recognized for doing good for
others. But is this true pleasure, or is it
something that's very fleeting by nature? This is
why Charles says that doing things for others
"without ostentation" is important.
If
I can make someone else smile today, then I've done
something pretty important. And when I consider the
potential ripple effect--that person or those persons may
be in a better mood and treat others better than they
would have otherwise--I know that I'm contributing to the
positive energy in this world.
It's
awesome to think about--by contributing to the positive
side of the world, I'm also contributing positive feelings
and pleasurable feelings to myself. It's definitely
true that what goes around, comes around, and what I send
around always will come back to me, usually magnified
strongly. So what do you say? How many people
will you make smile with a kind word or two on this day in
your life?
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